Ridicule

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mockery ( verb : to mock) is a means of communication . With this stylistic device someone deliberately makes fun of a person, a certain group or their actual or supposed values. Beyond artistic forms of expression - such as satire  - mockery can be meant jokingly in everyday use, but it can also be an expression of contempt or disrespect . In these cases it is experienced as humiliation and thus as a mental injury that can be felt more painful than a physical one. Mockery is similar to scorn , but differs in the motive . Mockery should always hurt, but not always mockery. If the mockery includes malicious joy , one speaks of malice .

etymology

The verb mock in its actual meaning for spitting comes from the Middle High German word mock and the Old High German word spotton . Derived from this is the Dutch mocking and the Swedish spotta . These verbs with an expressive doubling of the consonants are synonymous with the Old High German sponton , spotison with only one consonant t . The noun ridicule means scorn. The scornful man is a mocker. In ornithology, the equivalent word mocker describes the ability of those birds to imitate the calls of other birds.

presentation

Two girls mock another girl

Mockery is an inexpensive weapon for the mocker. Children like to use it. Often enough words (eg. As the exclamation "yah!"), Gestures or symbolic acts (Ausätschen, Rübchenschaben ) to trigger on the part of mocked violent reactions.

Mockery is often a means of polemics . The mocker wants to reveal weaknesses of a powerful, a counterpart. Not only enemies ridicule one another. Obviously, ridicule also has a certain stabilizing function within the framework of a social system.

Mockery comes in different degrees and forms. In addition to gross mockery, a long tradition of cultivated, stylized mockery has developed (see irony ). The caricature , the parody and the mocking song are considered stylistic devices of ridicule . Gallows humor can be seen as a form of self- mockery (see also black humor ).

The most serious form of ridicule is seen in blasphemy . In addition to blasphemy, it includes verbal or symbolic exposure and desecration of what is generally considered to be holy .

Historical examples

Even during the triumphal procession in the empire of ancient Rome, the people were tolerated to a certain extent as a valve function of ridicule and mockery. The figure of the court jester was often the target of general ridicule, on the other hand, he alone was granted the right to name unpleasant truths and even embarrassments in the field of the potentate and to mock them.

The popular fool, who as an outsider covers rich and poor alike with merciless ridicule, has become extremely popular in the tradition in the figure of Till Eulenspiegel . The same applies to Hodja Nasreddin in the Arab world.

The classic form of social mockery is satire , which dates back to antiquity ( Aristophanes , Lukian ) through the Middle Ages ( Sebastian Brant ) to modern times ( Erasmus , Grimmelshausen ), later in Jonathan Swift , Sterne , La Mettrie , Voltaire , Börne , Heinrich Heine and especially with Max Stirner rose to the highest form and by no means came to an end in the 20th century ( Karl Kraus , Kurt Tucholsky , George Orwell , Aldous Huxley ).

The 20th century has found an institution of ridicule on stage in cabaret . Even dictatorships recognized its specific valve function and at the same time understood how to channel and thereby defuse satires. In post-reunification Germany, the potential for ridicule of cabaret has evidently decreased on both sides of Germany.

Instead, the demand for comedy with a mixture of show , talk , action and mocking cynicism of varying levels is increasing .

People suffer to varying degrees when they are the target of ridicule. A pronounced and disproportionately great fear of being exposed to ridicule is known as catagelophobia .

Ridicule in the game

Einstein fountain by Jürgen Goertz , Ulm 1984

Mocking a fellow player or a game party has a long tradition in the game. It manifests itself in a variety of forms and can even be made the central idea of ​​the game. Systematically, these types of games are assigned to the category of heme games . The mockery can be carried out verbally through mocking songs or mocking verses. He can express himself gesturally by pointing fingers or sticking his tongue. It can optically consist of a branding by blackening the forehead. Often the so marked is also assigned a temporary special role in the game. These forms of play are widespread and quite popular, but psychologically and educationally they are not undisputed. According to experts, they should therefore only be attempted by didactically trained, sensitive and experienced game masters.

The traditionally strictly limited to 1 April April Fool's games live on the fun, "to send into April," an unsuspecting fellow, d. H. To lure him to a supposedly spectacular event or to give him a task that gives him an embarrassing surprise (e.g. to pick up a portion of " blow me blue " from the dealer ). Even adults usually atone for their good faith or curiosity. The joke game ends with general laughter and different reactions from those affected with the sentence “April, April, he just does what he wants” or, for short, “April, April”. The term Aprillsnarr can already be found in Grimm's German dictionary from 1854.

The Black Peter game is about who ultimately - at the back of the others maliciously laughed at - remains seated on the unloved playing card that is repeatedly moved among the other players and gets their foreheads blackened or has to pay for a drink for the game group.

In the goose thief game , a child who has not found a partner in a round dance is mocked as a "goose thief" in a symbol game.

In the Plumpsack game, people who react or walk so slowly that the catching Plumpsack overtake them are shown in the interior of the playing circle.

Ridicule in art

Illustration from the Ship of
Fools by Sebastian Brant

In his book The Ship of Fools , Sebastian Brant (1457–1521) mocks the educated show-off who, although he has many books as a figurehead of his "education" and well-readness, but neither reads nor understands them, just dusts them off.

At a high level, ridicule is also expressed in art: in literature, satirists and humorists such as Wilhelm Busch or Eugen Roth , and fable poets such as Jean de La Fontaine take people's weaknesses such as vanity or addiction to profit as an issue and make them look ridiculous. In painting, there are cycles on socially critical issues such as Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. In sculpture, artists play with the medium of ridicule in bizarre forms that can be found as monuments on fountains or the devil's work on church facades.

Ridicule in ethnology

Fixed customs of mutual mockery ( mockery relationships ) of tribes are explored in ethnology as joking relationships in their meaning. In Germany they occur as well, but less noticeably, such as between Cologne and Düsseldorf or Mainz and Wiesbaden , which is particularly evident every year in carnival.

See also

literature

  • Roger Caillois: The games and the people: mask and intoxication . Frankfurt a. M., Berlin, Vienna 1982.
  • Stefan Hess : April, April! A little story of the beautiful and already quite old tradition of making a fool of someone. In: Basler Zeitung , March 31, 2014. ( online ).
  • Friedrich Kluge : Etymological dictionary of the German language . 24th edition. de Gruyter, Berlin, New York 2002, ISBN 978-3-11-017473-1 , pp. 869 (keyword: ridicule).
  • Eugen Roth: A person. Cheerful verses . New edition by Sanssouci, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-7254-1430-0 .
  • Siegbert A. Warwitz, Anita Rudolf: Controversial forms of play . In: Dies .: The sense of playing. Reflections and game ideas . 4th edition, Baltmannsweiler 2016, ISBN 978-3-8340-1664-5 .

Web links

Wiktionary: ridicule  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. Michael Utz: Mockery and ridicule. In: Deutsche Welle Sprachbar. Retrieved July 14, 2019 .
  2. Duden: The dictionary of origin. Lemma mock, Mannheim 2007
  3. Stefan Hess: April, April! A little story of the beautiful and already quite old tradition of making a fool of someone. In: Basler Zeitung , March 31, 2014 ( online ).
  4. ^ Siegbert A. Warwitz , Anita Rudolf: Controversial forms of play. In: Dies .: The sense of playing. Reflections and game ideas. 3rd, updated edition. Schneider-Verlag Hohengehren, Baltmannsweiler 2014, ISBN 978-3-8340-1291-3 , pp. 126-160.
  5. dwb.uni-trier.de .
  6. ^ Roger Caillois : The games and the people. Mask and intoxication. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-548-35153-0 .
  7. Eugen Roth: A person. Cheerful verses . Munich 2006